Steve Roach - Structures from Silence (3-disc, 30th anniversary edition)This arrived Friday and I'm super excited about it. My ears are not as sharp as those of others on the forums. I can't tell whether the re-mastered version of the original is improved. It is, nonetheless, fun to listen to in the context of the anniversary.

The two additional discs contain four new tracks that are inspired by the same themes and mood captured in the original recording. They are excellent. The tracks on Disc 2 "feel" more like they belong in a SfS era, and the tracks on Disc 3 feel more akin to those from the Immersion series than Structures from Silence. But everything hangs together nicely, and the evolution from 1984 to some of the contemporary long-form, darker, Immersion work makes for an enjoyable journey in this package.

Also been listening to - Nacht Plank - Psychology of Religion and Understanding St. Catherine, mentioned by Chris.........Excellent. Discovered it's on spotify , although I will have to get the download. Severely fancying that Steve Roach 30th Anniversary edition also

Interesting to hear that youtube is used these days by lots of people primarily to browse for music.

That only bothers me is if the music is up there without the artist's or label's consent. It's not unusual to see entire albums up there, and I would be surprised if most of the postings had prior consent. The default assumption these days seems to be that you must have consented to it, even if you didn't know about it or didn't see it up there when you last checked.

Recent plays: Lloyd Cole - Standards (really excellent; he's plugged in again). Margins-Fragile Existence (photographs and portfolio are spectacular, very much in the vein of Alio Die's album images; music is just OK).

René Margraff - phasenA relatively new release from Pillowdiver's René Margraff, on Home Normal. Like some of his other releases, phasen is comprised mostly of soundscapes created with processed guitar. Some of the tracks are amazing (e.g., the first one) and some of them, at least in my opinion, are pretty lackluster. (I should be more careful about buying things via pre-order based on one or two samples.)

Yes, but that's the individual artist or label's decision to make, not the listener's. I'm completely OK with the occasional piece of mine appearing on a blog mix, for example. What I'm not OK with is a person posting one of my releases in its entirety anywhere in any form without my consent or my label's. This has happened more than once and I've had to sent take down notices.

While I agree with what Forrest says (I wouldn't be best pleased if someone uploded one of my albums without my permission), I still think it's where a lot of people are going to find new music, so I make a video (usually a montage) whenever I release something and put it up on the choob.

I can't think of better ways to get it 'out there'. soundcloud (for example) doesn't work in that way, in my experience.

When music that is mentioned here in the "Now Playing" thread that I might be interested in I follow whatever links are offered and also head to youtube which usually has a fair share of the artists music to help me decide in my purchase. It is a great resource. I agree with Forrest about artists rights yet most of the youtube post I listen to have so much admiration for the music being posted its hard to fault it.

Really a lot of my music purchasing decisions are often based more on youtube than the artist websites because of the silly 30 second sound clip rule that many adhere.....perhaps a Youtube thread?

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"Life is one big road, with lots of signs, so when you ride to the Roots, do not complicate your mind, ... " Bob Marley

I know there can be an inherent tension between an artist or a small label's rights and a listener's desire to hear as music as he or she can for as cheap as possible, and that YouTube for some fulfills that need alone, while other use it as a basis for experimenting with purchasing new music. Ultimately, if musicmaking can no longer pay for itself and, instead, musicians continue to lose money paying for mastering, licensing of photos and artwork, you will have fewer musicians able or willing to do this at a continued loss and I think the pool of available music will gradually become the poorer for it. If listeners truly respect the musicians whose music they like, they should pay for it, unless the musician chooses to make it available for free. I try to balance my pay releases with some "free" material, such as my "Seeds of Memory" EP on Thomas Park's Treetrunk netlabel, as a way of giving those unfamiliar with my work a taste of what I do.

I buy quite a bit of music, physical and virtual, so I try to put money where my mouth is, as I think it's the right thing to do.

Ultimately, if musicmaking can no longer pay for itself and, instead, musicians continue to lose money paying for mastering, licensing of photos and artwork, you will have fewer musicians able or willing to do this at a continued loss and I think the pool of available music will gradually become the poorer for it. If listeners truly respect the musicians whose music they like, they should pay for it, unless the musician chooses to make it available for free

Forrest

What you say here Forrest is becoming a disturbing reality, or perhaps is a reality. The idea of a pool of music becoming a puddle is a sad picture. Some might say that there is so much out there that maybe its not a terrible thing yet it would be for the wrong reason. All suffer for sure.

I feel that artists / musicians need to step up their personal exposure via websites / Bandcamp etc....and offer music fans a decent amount of music to listen to to help the purchasing process and thus avoid the need for youtube browsing. This is my reason for going to youtube because I often cant find the music discussed here. 30 second sound clips @ amazon, itunes & cdbay does not promoted sales in IMHO. I realize that what you say Forrest goes much deeper and started with the Napster thing and now "Free" is the first step towards success

This is a huge topic.....one worth chatting about for musicians and even more so music lovers.

Logged

"Life is one big road, with lots of signs, so when you ride to the Roots, do not complicate your mind, ... " Bob Marley

Richard Ginns - In FloatA 2014 release on Tattersall's Cotton Goods label. This is electo-acoustic ambient at it's finest. The atmosphere is a fragile one with sounds hovering, sustaining, and then vanishing. Listening to the album brings to mind the image of motes of dust floating through a sunbeam.

To tie this into the YouTube thread: This is an album that I never would have bought if the artist hadn't uploaded it to Bandcamp. The cost of buying this limited edition release, combined with the shipping from the UK, was prohibitive. I just didn't want to take a chance based on the few samples I heard on the Cotton Goods website. But after streaming the album once on Bandcamp, I found myself returning to it over and over again and finally bought the digital version as a way of showing my support.